Cons:

With hit creations like the Guitar Hero franchise and Rock Band, Harmonix has earned its reputation as a studio that gets music-based games right. So when Harmonix threw its hat over the dance game fence -- an area pretty much owned by Konami's Dance Dance Revolution franchise -- I sat up and took notice. I'm a huge DDR fan, but what would a dancing game from a music-loving western developer with an excellent track record look like? Well, even as a first effort, Dance Central nails it -- fun, cool factor, and all -- and falls only a few steps shy of pure dancing perfection.

Seeing as how it just launched, Microsoft's Kinect motion-control peripheral (mandatory for Dance Central) is brand-new, so I'll give some context as to how it works here. You need six to eight feet of unobstructed space between the Kinect sensor and your body to play, and that area should not be flooded with sunlight. All game menus can be navigated either with a controller or by swiping your right or left hand toward the center of the screen. The physical space requirements alone may exclude some potential players, but if your home is Kinect-friendly, this is what you can expect.

Dance Central cuts a wide swath in its musical selection of nearly every type of modern music that you might hear in a dance club. From pop to Latin, crunk to hyphy, R&B to classic hip-hop -- just about anyone can find something here. The game isn't just about the music, though; songs that you might never like otherwise are often fun to perform because of the choreography. For example, I'm no fan of Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)," but I love to break out my salsa and merengue steps (at least in the comfort of my living room).

This, of course, begs the question: "How the heck am I going to learn how to do these steps?" Harmonix has a brilliant solution: Break It Down. In this mode, each dance step -- represented by an onscreen flash card -- is taught individually while a section of the song loops in the background (and I have to mention that the audio looping and count-ins are fantastic). If you can nail the move the first time, you can proceed; otherwise, you'll have to do it correctly three times. You can also slow down or retry any move at appropriate times using left-hand commands. It's worth noting that the game is a bit sensitive when it comes to left-hand commands; I accidentally retried difficult dance steps several times just from celebrating or reaching for a drink. After mastering a series of moves, you string them together in a recap, and receive a percentage mastery score at the end. It's a class act from top to bottom.

That brings us to scoring -- or what makes Dance Central a game. Harmonix's familiar five-star system returns (including gold stars), and scoring well in songs gradually increases your rank from Wallflower up to Living Legend. All songs are unlocked from the start, and can be tackled in any order; along the way, you unlock new venues and new outfits for the (preset) dancers. The game doesn't suffer from its lack of a career mode, but it is a bit baffling that all the dancers in the game are canned rather than customizable (Rock Band had me spoiled in its character creation). Maybe this choice was made because all the dancers have voices and quips -- which vary from mildly to horribly grating -- but it was a bad call.

Now, how good is the dance recognition? It depends on the dance, but the simple answer is: very good. Some dance moves have so much going on that the scoring is lenient, while other, simpler steps can be failed repeatedly because your arm wasn't straight or your leg wasn't bent. You'll certainly encounter some "problem steps" at any difficulty (especially since song difficulty is defined by the number of individual steps as much as their complexity), and the red glow on the dancer's body part that you're effing up isn't always sufficient for self-correction. Luckily, these moves are rare, and you can generally trust that the game will credit you where credit is due.

For all that Dance Central gets right, it misses some opportunities. Multiplayer is limited to local "Dance Battles," where two players hop in and out, since Dance Central only tracks one dancer at a time. It's got no online competition at all, except for song leaderboards. Furthermore, you're likely to work up a sweat after only a few songs, so it's a disappointment that the game's workout mode is a simple calorie-counter that you can turn on and off. It would be great to put together a playlist of songs at varying difficulties that would allow me to dance continuously without shuffling through menus after each song.

Yeah, my complaints about Dance Central are almost niggling -- while I see ample room for improvement, nothing else will have your living room packed full of people dropping it like it's hot. You can even learn a lot of dance moves you wouldn't mind busting out in an actual dance club. I've never played anything quite like it, and I think I'm ready to retire my DDR dance pads permanently, because this is the real revolution.